Horizon 0 Dawn's Nora Tribe's Legends

You know what’s kinda neat?  The fact that the simplistic perspective of the Nora tribe’s legends actually makes sense for once.

See, there’s this thing that kind of annoys me in RPGs.  And a lot of other media, really, but RPGs are definitely 1 of the more frequent offenders in this regard.  There’s a common storytelling trope in which some legend, or fairy tale, or foundational religious text, or whatever, will describe the events of long ago in a way that is essentially accurate, but dumbed-down, non-specific, needlessly mystical, and/or filled with unnecessary metaphors.  Like, say you’re playing an RPG that takes place on the planet Gaia,* a world which had some thriving, technologically advanced civilization in the distant past which, 1000 years ago, was mostly wiped out by some kind of alien invaders, who in turn were only stopped by some surviving communications technician having figured out how to, I dunno, simulate a “Get the fuck back here and take out the garbage before you start going around conquering worlds; you have responsibilities dammit” signal from the invaders’ home planet, causing the invaders to go back home so their mom will get off their case.

Almost invariably, the story of these events of 1000 years ago will, in present times, be relayed something like this: the Ancient Ones (the advanced human civilization) were been great and powerful wizards, and yet were helpless when some terrible demon (the aliens) descended from the skies to smite them, until 1 hero (the comm tech) stood atop a holy ziggurat (the radio tower, which he never actually stood on) to banish the demon with some great holy light (that little red light at the top of the radio tower blinked a couple times during the broadcast), after which the hero mysteriously vanished, never to be seen by those he had saved again (decided rebuilding civilization would be a pain in the ass and opted to just hang out in his little communications bunker with his porn collection instead).  It’s always some grand, overblown affair that’s metaphorically correct enough, but simplistic and vague and mystical.

And 4 times out of 5, it doesn’t make goddamn sense.  Why are these misleading, simplistic religious analogies always the only historical perspectives to be found in RPG cultures?  Were the only living observers of past cataclysms all 5 years old?  The RPG civilizations themselves might have been knocked back technologically, but why would their survivors also be knocked back mentally, to some previous cultural standard of cave paintings and fireside stories?  What, no one who survived the cataclysm in the past was capable of leaving any kind of more extensive, thorough record than some misleading analogies printed in runes along a simplistic wall-scroll?  Not a single individual involved with the rekindling of civilization knew how to write a full 3 pages of basic records in a book?  There wasn’t a soul alive who could artistically depict the great calamity with greater accuracy than some blurry, mean-looking eye up in the air with dark scribbles coming out of it?

And hell, even when the civilizations of the past weren’t especially advanced, they also were pretty much never, like, at a tribal stage of development, either.**  At most, they were at a quasi-medieval fantasy world development stage comparable to the world’s current state.  They still had enough advancements in communication and the arts, not to mention presumably basic historical record-keeping, that they should’ve been able to do better than a kindergartner’s 3-minute summary.

Yeah, okay, you can explain SOME of this away to a degree as a process of facts becoming myths over time, stories being tweaked by the tellers to be more interesting, less advanced cultures not having enough understanding of the specifics to really get it, and, of course, good old-fashioned falsifying records for the benefit of those in power, but come ON  The degree and the frequency to which these history-to-magical-myth scenarios occur in RPGs is way, way too great to be reasonable.

Horizon 0 Dawn, however, actually does this in a way that makes sense!  At least, in the case of the Nora tribe.  The Nora’s legends of the All-Mother, the Metal Devil, and the Old Ones are your standard RPG fare in that they’re more or less accurate to the actual history of the world, but in a very symbolic and simplified way.  Here’s the thing, though: the originators of these stories were people whose mental advancement, in terms of culture, was held back at a preschool level.

The people creating the Nora tribe’s legends were the new generation of humans that GAIA had created, according to the plan of Zero Dawn to return humanity to the world after the Faro Plague.  Originally planned to be raised by a couple of simple, nurturing robots/holograms until of an age to be educated by the APOLLO program on their heritage of culture and history, this new generation of human beings were denied the legacy of their species thanks to that mewling fucktard Ted Faro, and so the new generation of humanity just lived its whole childhood being raised by caretakers who were only designed to engage with charges at the mental level of 4 - 6 years old or so.  The parental programs clearly did tell the children they raised some simple version of the fall of humanity, as evidenced by the wall-paintings found in the Cradle facility within which they were raised--but of course, the version of this history that was told to the new human race was simplified, and incomplete.  After all, that’s what you do when you explain a very complicated and difficult concept to a child: you simplify it, keep the essence of the matter but leave the harder stuff for a later time when the kid’s developed to a point of being able to understand it, or just use easier analogies for certain details.  It’s a process that results in an essentially identical type of narrative editing that you encounter with all these dumbed-down, mystified RPG legends and histories.

So no wonder that’s how the Nora’s legends came to exist in the form they do--because they originated as stories intended for small children.  Not only that, but the people hearing these stories did so first at an appropriately young age, so their take-aways of this already simplified history would also be that much more limited.  Granted, these people were kept in their virtual playpen well into young adulthood, but they’d still be approaching this story with minds stunted by a lack of any more mature or critical an approach to culture than what they themselves could invent, and no second perspective.  So yeah, it’s completely reasonable that the religious beliefs of the Nora tribe which intersect with the truth of the world’s history would take on this classic RPG legend form; you can actually see the bedrock of these legends, and the reason for a lack of anything more accurate and straightforward.

Even the parts that deviate from or add to what we can reasonably assume the caretaker programs’ story to have been are sensible!  Raised as they were by a perpetually nurturing female program and a forever disciplinary male program, it’s clear which parent-figure the humans of the Cradle would better love, and fixate upon after being exiled out into the world on their own.  That solitary figure of nurturing guidance and the loss of her, when combined with any simplified story of the fall and rebirth of humanity (which would have to include either GAIA or Elizabet Sobeck, both females, as its central figure), would quite naturally lead to the Nora tribe’s concept of the All-Mother goddess.

The creators of Horizon 0 Dawn actually designed a way for this whole simplistic, mystical legend-as-history situation to make sense, and I really think that’s a neat bit of effort worth recognition.  This trope is such a knee-jerk plot tool that no one, author or audience, seems to even question whether it seems realistic that practically every damn RPG’s got some fundamentally accurate but vague and metaphorical legend describing the world’s actual history.  But H0D’s creators didn’t just employ the cliche and call it a day, they actually carefully crafted a scenario in which the elementary nature of the Nora tribe’s legends was a reasonable result.  It’s a small piece of the great narrative craftsmanship of Horizon 0 Dawn, but the many major ways in which the game is excellent are well-observed and appropriately lauded, so I thought it would be nice to point out a detail that I haven’t seen appreciated previously.  Kudos to Guerrilla Games for their care and dedication to even small details like this one!












* Hey, if RPG writers don’t feel the need to take the 0.75 seconds necessary to think of an original name for their fantasy planets, why the hell should I?  Gaia and Terra are like the RPG planetary name equivalents to Aiden and -aiden variants in the last decade.


** Which still wouldn’t be much of an excuse, really.  Even our real-world examples of very early records/stories often have pretty specific information to share.  The Old Testament, for example, is so enthusiastic about constantly and meticulously mapping out the genealogies of its characters that one could be forgiven for wondering whether the whole thing was just an elaborate advertisement for 23andMe.  If the Bible can fixate on who begat who like it was some fanboy explaining the lore of his Fire Emblem/Game of Thrones crossover headcanon, then surely a little more basic, informative content is not so unreasonable an expectation to have of these countless RPG actually-historical legends.